"Brain Cutting" by George Bascom

 $Unique_ID{AST00202}

$Title{Brain Cutting}

$Author{Bascom, George S., M.D.}

$Subject{poetry}

$Journal{}

$Volume{}

$Date{1982}

$Log{}

                                 LATE ASTERS

                                Brain Cutting

We have some superstitions yet,

Though subtler than the fear gods

Jungle thick in Surinam.

The deepy-talky Djukas, I am told,

Believe that magic carving

Will protect them from the evil ones.

So busy black veined hands

Carve endless intricacies

On combs and lintels,

Paddles, charms, and spoons

To lay a certain hold

On snakes, piranhas, pregnancy, and death.

Today I saw a brain sectioned on a block

From stem to frontal lobe.

It seemed a sacrilege

To lay this wondrous organ out,

Slice by slice, like cheese.

I trembled at the act

But held my tongue

Fearful of pathologist and peers.

     yet what of the former owner?

     had he fashioned prayer and poetry with this?

     might he still have need for what

     now lay so carelessly before our eyes?

     and what of me,

     anxiously alive in the postmortem room?

     what of my cherished brain?

     I could hardly bear to think of it

     abandoned on that cold unfeeling slab

     among the jars and stainless steel.

The pathologist, however, scowled.

He poked a slab where fatal hemorrhage

Had stained the cortex black.

He showed us where the aneurysm leaked,

Flicked the thin, attenuated wall with scissors point,

Then dropped the ruined brain back into its jar,

Leaving us alone in the cold room

With all the Djuka fears

In white flourescent light,

Awkward suddenly to feel the dread

Among the microscopes and special stains

Whose magic is to banish fear

By driving through its heart

A steel cold name.

Names do not rot

Like carven charms,

But even in the lab

They echo emptily

Though fashioned by enlightened minds

And not by Djuka hands

Busily at work

Beneath the fearful mystery.